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Agriculture

From butter churns to diesel tractors, the Museum's agricultural artifacts trace the story of Americans who work the land. Agricultural tools and machinery in the collections range from a John Deere plow of the 1830s to 20th-century cultivators and harvesters. The Museum's holdings also include overalls, aprons, and sunbonnets; farm photographs; milk cans and food jars; handmade horse collars; and some 200 oral histories of farm men and women in the South. Prints in the collections show hundreds of scenes of rural life. The politics of agriculture are part of the story, too, told in materials related to farm workers' unions and a group of artifacts donated by the family of the labor leader Cesar Chavez.

During the 19th century Baugh & Sons was one of the largest fertilizer manufacturers in the United States. Baugh manufactured a variety of ground bone based agriculture fertilizers that were tailored for a wide range of crops. Baugh’s fertilizers were widely available from farm supply stores who bought fertilizer from Baugh’s salesmen who would have used sample boxes like this.

This wooden grain fork was used during the late 19th century. Wide tined pitch forks like this were used to pitch hay, grains, straw, and other agricultural products. Before the mechanization of harvesting by combines, reaping, threshing, and winnowing were done by hand with simple tools like this wooden pitchfork.

This miniature Huber Traction engine model is a working steam model built by Mr. Raymond T. Stout in 1962. “Live” steam toys were very popular in the late 19th and early 20th century, model tractors and engines were considered children’s playthings, helping them learn engineering principles at an early age. This is a model of a 1901 Huber Traction engine, a steam-powered tractor that could be used to haul a load, or power machinery by attaching a belt to the engine’s flywheel.

Fordson tractors were in production in the US between 1917 and 1928. As gas-powered tractors dropped in price, farmers moved away from horse-drawn equipment. Seventy-five percent of tractors purchased in 1923 were Fordsons. This tractor is powered by a 4 cylinder, 3 speed, 20 HP engine. It measures 42" across the rear wheels and 28" across the front wheels. It has front steel wheels with lugs on the rear. The original owner added an Allison hoist to the front of the tractor.

In 1923, D. A. McCandliss, a federal statistician, invented the crop meter as a more reliable way to estimate cotton acreage in Mississippi. The new technology soon spread to other states. Crop meters were a vast improvement over earlier methods of crop estimation, such as counting fields or having farmers mail in estimates. The crop meter sat on a car dashboard and was connected to the speedometer shaft. As the car drove along the edge of a field, the meter measured the “frontage” of the field. Statisticians used these measurements to estimate total acreage. This meter is a “double bank” model. The two rows of keys allowed the driver to take measurements of fields on both sides of the road. The crop meter was later replaced by aerial observation.

Agricultural statistics provide valuable economic information. They are important not only to farmers but also to those in business and government. In 1912, the USDA began making crop forecasts before harvest, rather than only reporting production after the harvest. Crop forecasts were of particular interest to federal officials during the New Deal. Congress sought to regulate supply and demand for agricultural products. The Agricultural Adjustment Act of 1933 established a subsidy program that paid farmers to take fields out of production. It included seven products designated as “basic crops”: corn, wheat, cotton, rice, peanuts, tobacco, and milk. Subsidies came from a tax on companies that processed farm products, but in 1936, the Supreme Court ruled the tax unconstitutional. As a result, the Agricultural Adjustment Act of 1938 established a quota system and overproduction penalties.

In 1839 the U. S. Patent Office founded the U. S. Propagation Garden, run by William Saunders, who continued to supervise the garden when it was moved to the Department of Agriculture in 1862. The garden would breed economically viable plants and mail the seeds to farmers across the United States. In the early 20th century the USDA ran a wide ranging soil sample study, and then focused on tobacco as a cash crop. Studies done by Milton Whitney, A. D. Shamel, and W. W. Cobey of the USDA proposed introducing shade grown seed leaf tobacco to Connecticut. This broad leaf tobacco was hybridized with Sumatra tobacco that could be used for cigar wrappers and sold for $2.50 to $3 per pound, up from 18 or 20 cents per pound for the Connecticut Havana tobacco. This switch to a Sumatra hybrid was a boon to the Connecticut Valley tobacco industry, who originally received seeds from the USDA to spur their change.

This “trade axe” was used in trade between the British merchants and Native American trappers during the mid-19th century. The axe has a single piece of curled iron on a wooden handle. Beaver fur trading was central to the North American economy from the 16th until to the mid-19th century. British traders exchanged one beaver pelt for one axe head. The pelt was sold in England for 16 shillings, while the trade axe cost a mere 2 shillings to buy, leading to a massive profit for the traders, and the associated Hudson’s Bay Company, who monopolized the beaver fur trade in North America.

Henry H. Beville, the inventor of the “Iron Duke” windmill, was a traveling salesman for a farm implement company in Indiana. He designed the windmill while on the road in the 1870s. A young Union veteran, Beville held a variety of jobs after returning from the war and, at one point, lost all of his possessions in a fire. After receiving his patent in 1880, Beville licensed the Iron Duke for manufacture and sale, making a substantial profit on his invention. That same year, he opened a real estate office in Indianapolis. Between windmill sales and real estate, Beville had a prosperous career. Well-respected in the business community and active in civic life, he helped attract a number of manufacturing companies to Indianapolis.

In early America, windmills followed the European model. As the wind changed direction, workers manually adjusted the position of large wood and cloth sails. In the 1850s, inventor Daniel Halladay and his business partner, John Burnham, introduced a self-regulating windmill and water pump. In contrast to traditional windmills, self-regulating windmills had a tail vane to turn blades. A centrifugal governor regulated speed by changing the angle of the blades. This allowed the windmill to work efficiently in low winds and slow down for protection in high winds. Windmills provided farmers and ranchers with a reliable power source to pump water from underground. Halladay and Burnham moved from New England to Chicago to take advantage of the expanding Midwestern market, and other manufacturers followed their lead. Between 1870 and 1900, American farmers put about 230 million acres into agricultural production, much of it in the arid Great Plains.

The Iron Duke, as its name suggests, was an all-iron windmill. Until the 1870s, American windmills were wooden, containing metal only in bolts and other small parts. In 1876, the first metal windmill, J. S. Risdon’s “Iron Turbine,” appeared on the market. Other models followed, but according to historian T. Lindsay Baker, major production of metal windmills did not begin for another twenty years. Beginning in the 1890s, manufacturers were able to take advantage of lower steel prices. The manufacturers of the Iron Duke compared its strength and durability to that of wooden windmills. An advertisement in The American Agriculturist announced, “Will not shrink, warp, split, decay, and will stand more work than any mill extant.” Yet, despite the growing popularity of iron or steel models, many farmers and ranchers preferred wood. They found metal windmills difficult to repair, and many manufacturers had a reputation for using less steel to cut costs.

Labels are an important marketing device. They often go beyond merely identifying contents and are designed to help establish brand distinction and generate customer loyalty for a largely interchangeable product.

This crate label is for El Tejon brand Mexican tomatoes. The tomatoes were grown and packed by the Seicho Company of Verdura, Sinaloa, Mexico in the beginning of the 20th century.

This shipping crate side contained chocolate produced by Walter Baker & Company Ltd. of Dorchester, Massachusetts during the early 20th century. The crate side features a central image of a woman carrying a tray with a mug and a glass of water. The logo comes from the painting “The Chocolate Girl” by Jean-Étienne Liotard, which the company adopted as its trademark in 1883.